Where We Went Wrong
by scarlettshazam
Summary: Two years ago, Craig Tucker got arrested and sent to juvenile hall. He's back in town, and for some reason, seems to have taken an interest in one Tweek Tweak. Creek.
1. The Guts

**Chapter Track: Valium Knights – Spinnerette**

Although it's summer vacation, Tweek's mornings tend to begin early. He doesn't mind, because he doesn't sleep much, anyway. Some combination of his pills and his brain makes him skulk around his house at night or toss and turn in his bed with his eyes wide open until his body has enough and crashes for hours – he doesn't know why. He can't stop it. One day bleeds into another, days that are always the same.

But Tweek doesn't mind that, either. He likes his regular schedule of turning off the television at five o'clock in the morning, preparing himself a coffee cocktail with a dash of hard liquor to swallow down the bouquet of pills he gets from his psychiatrist and from Kenny McCormick, and tromping to Tweak Bros to start a day of work.

Tweek opens the shop at exactly six every morning. The first two hours of the day are always the busiest, when everybody comes to get their coffee before they go to work. Otherwise his days are slow and boring – they're safe. There aren't many people around, and he likes it that way.

Today, after Sharon Marsh gets her usual skinny latte at eight thirty, no more customers come until noon. Bebe and Wendy show up then, catching Tweek in the middle of a riveting scene in his book, a used scifi that he got at the used bookstore in the next town over for a buck fifty. He likes when Bebe and Wendy come in – they're always polite to him and both of them are good tippers, and after they finish their drinks they always make sure to put the cups in the dirty dish bin before they leave the shop.

It's a quiet job, in his quiet town. He can't complain.

It suits him.

When Tweek is around too many people, he feels overwhelmed, no matter how much vodka is in his thermos. This is why, despite all the craziness that this town sees, that he likes South Park. He already knows everybody that lives here. It's small. The town has calmed down in recent years. Beyond the antics of bored teenagers, not much happens. He's been going to school with the same people for his entire life (though hitting high school has been a challenge, as the high school is county-wide and he doesn't know everybody).

This is why he knows that Craig Tucker shouldn't be standing at the counter in front of him in Tweak Bros, because Craig Tucker is supposed to be locked away in juvenile hall.

Craig waves his hand in front of Tweek's face and says, "Hello? Anybody in there?"

He marks his book and sets it down with the rest of his things where he stashes them beside the register, "Um," Tweek manages.

Very eloquent, Tweek.

"What c-can I get you?" he asks quietly. Inside, he groans at the appearance of his stammer. Years of speech classes since elementary school have done away with it for the most part, but when he's nervous or surprised, sometimes he can't help it.

Two years ago there was a big to-do at the Tucker house. The entire neighborhood watched Craig get hauled out in handcuffs, with flashing lights and more than one cop car – the whole nine yards. Tweek hears that he ended up on White Trash and In Trouble, but he never cared to check if it was true. Cartman filmed it and uploaded it onto Youtube.

And nobody _really_ knows what Craig did, but for all that drama? Tweek's bet is on murder.

There is a murderer in his parents' coffee shop.

Craig scratches the hair underneath his blue hat and answers, "Just a bottomless coffee. You guys still do that, right?" He definitely looks different than he did two years ago. Then again, two years ago, they were fourteen and couldn't have been more awkward (Tweek is still awkward and doubts he'll ever _grow out of it_, but oh well). His dark hair is longer and unkempt, and he's at least half a foot taller, beating Tweek by a solid couple of inches.

He also has a scar on his face.

It's not very long, just about an inch and a half of puckered pink skin.

"Did you get that in a prison knife fight?" Tweek asks, because he can't help himself.

Craig reaches up and touches it. He lifts a brow at Tweek and replies, "Nah. Just from messing around. How about that coffee?"

"Uh, yeah. Sorry," Tweek babbles. He scrambles back and pours Craig black coffee in one of their red mugs, the ones that they use so that they know the customer can have as many refills as they'd like. He passes it to Craig and mumbles, "Um, two dollars and ninety cents, please."

Craig digs in the pocket of his cargo shorts. He dumps a number of things on the counter between them – a blue pen, a half-used up pack of gum, some loose cigarettes, and a pocketknife.

Tweek glances down at it nervously and blurts, "Is this a stick-up?"

Craig blinks at him, "Stick-up? What is this, a spaghetti western? I'm just looking for my money." He dumps a handful of change onto the counter and has Tweek count out the right amount while he replaces his things in his pockets.

Craig picks a table in the back of the shop and dumps his backpack onto one of the seats. He pulls out some papers and a book and sits in the opposite seat. He _looks_ harmless, sort of. Except for the scar. Tweek still bets prison knife fight.

For the next several minutes, Tweek wonders if he should call his parents and ask them to cover for him, mainly because he doesn't want to be in the same building as a suspected murderer – but Craig doesn't seem to be doing anything particularly murderous, really. He screws his headphones into his ears and takes his blue pen out of his pocket, chewing on the end while he concentrates on the papers on his table.

Few customers come after Craig. It's only Thursday, and most people are holed up at work, or out enjoying their summer vacation. Tweek doesn't like being outside in the summer. It's too hot and sunny, and his allergies flare up like nobody's business. Night time is better. This far into the mountains, you can see what seems like every last star in the sky.

To pass the time until cleanup and closing, Tweek slides his laptop out of his bag. He dicks around on the internet for a while the sun sets, but he makes sure to keep an eye on Craig. Craig only moves to get coffee refills and go to the bathroom. Still – who knows what else he could have in his pockets.

Tweek gets involved in reading articles about the impending Mars landing. His mind drifts from planets outside of their solar system, and outside of their galaxy – about the things that might live there, and the technology that they might have.

"What the hell kind of laptop is that?"

Craig is standing at the counter.

"Gah! S-shit, you scared me," Tweek accuses. Craig has his backpack back on, and his table in the back is clear. But he doesn't look like a man about to knife a barista, just – curious.

"It's an Alienware laptop," Tweek replies.

"Never seen one before," remarks Craig, "They expensive? It's kind of cool looking. Hey, you wanna come hang out? This place is boring, we could chill at my place."

"I have to work," Tweek says, and points at his apron.

"So? Just call your parents and tell them that there's nobody here and you're gonna take off," responds Craig.

Tweek shakes his head. No, his parents would _not_ like if he abandoned his responsibilities. They're strict about that stuff. He doesn't put starving him to death past his parents, really, and so he doesn't want to do anything that might piss them off. He says back, "I can't. Tweak Bros stays open until nine o'clock every day except for Sunday, so I have to be here until nine o'clock."

Craig holds up his hands and says, "Okay, whatever."

The bell on the door rings as Craig marches out, and Tweek watches as he makes his way down the block, toward the residential section of South Park.

Nobody else does come that night, and after sweeping and mopping the floors, Tweek closes at exactly nine. He has to walk home, which puts him on edge tonight. What is Craig Tucker doing back in South Park? He's a dangerous convict, at least as far as the rumor mill went. Maybe Tweek shouldn't trust rumors, but isn't it better to be safe than sorry?

When he reaches his house, it's dark and quiet inside. He hears giggling upstairs and rolls his eyes, locking the front door behind him. Tweek ducks into the kitchen and flips on the light, dumping a generous amount of Bailey's into the coffee he poured into his thermos before leaving work, and screws the lid back on. He shakes it up to mix it and swallows some down. It's good. He knows he shouldn't combine alcohol with pills, but it keeps him calm. He's always on edge, and can't seem to come down without a little help.

Tweek heads upstairs and locks his bedroom door behind him. He's learned to tune out his parents, because they obviously don't care what he hears or doesn't hear. He thinks they don't worry about it because Tweek doesn't sleep much anyway.

Most nights, Tweek ends up giving up on tossing and turning in his sheets and wanders downstairs, where he watches old X-Files episodes until it's time for him to open up the coffee shop (if it's one of his days. Most days are his days, though. His parents say that it's "an exercise in responsibility.").

Tonight, he wastes time poking through his own blog while he finishes off his coffee and Bailey's. Nobody new has commented, which is nice, because most people just comment to call him crazy.

Tweek runs a blog called "The Truth: They Are Real" about aliens and UFO sightings all over the world. He only has a handful of people that listen to him, but he's glad that somebody is willing to hear the truth – everybody else is just deluding themselves. Tweek believes that South Park in particular is a magnet for alien activity. They've had too many odd things happen in this town for normalcy.

Hours sail by as he cruises the internet. He takes a short break to try and tackle his summer homework, but can't focus and ends up treading down the stairs in his pajamas to turn on the TV.

Except –

What the hell?

Tweek hears a noise. It isn't far, though he doesn't think it's in the neighborhood.

It's some kind of buzzing, a whirring sound that is exactly –

_What a UFO should sound like._

Tweek scrambles back up to his bedroom and shoves his feet into sneakers, grabbing his Alien Bag, which contains his camera, pepper spray, and items he thinks would interest beings from another planet, including season four of the reboot of Doctor Who.

He sprints back down the stairs and grabs his bike from where it's chained on the porch. The noise is coming from the highway just outside of town, he thinks. He bikes hard toward it, sweat dribbling down his face and into his pajamas. He doesn't think that aliens would mind sweat much. Maybe they'd even be interested.

South Park is quiet tonight. He sees light coming out of the basement window in Stan's house and bets that they're drinking and playing video games. Tweek sometimes wonders what he would be like if he was still friends with them. Stan and those guys aren't mean to him (except Cartman, but whatever, Cartman's a dick to everybody), but Tweek does miss having friends from time to time. He likes being alone, but he doesn't like being lonely – and he's been lonely lately.

The highway is as empty as the town, but Tweek still hears the whirring. He doesn't see anything yet, but maybe as soon as he gets over the hill he will.

But when Tweek reaches the top of the hill, there are no UFOs, and there are no strange lights. Just a pair of headlights and a car with a coffee can muffler. They're going way too fast for this highway. He doesn't like it, and likes it even less as the headlights approach. The car slows down as it gets close to where Tweek is biking along the side of the road.

And then it stops. The car pulls over onto the side of the road, right in front of Tweek's bike.

"I don't have any money!" exclaims Tweek, when the driver's door opens.

"Tweek? What are you doing out here so late?"

It's –

Craig Tucker.

Again.

"What are _you_ doing out so late?" Tweek shoots back.

"I asked you first," Craig says. He slams the door closed and leans against the car. He folds his arms and cocks a brow, "Well?"

What if Tweek caught Craig running from the cops?

Or worse, what if Craig was on the way to bury the body of one of his victims?

"You would laugh at me if I told you," Tweek responds. This is how most people tend to react to his enthusiasm about aliens.

Craig reaches into the pocket of his shorts and pulls one of the cigarettes out. He offers it to Tweek and says, "You want?"

"I don't smoke," Tweek replies.

"Suit yourself," responds Craig. He places the cigarette between his lips and lights it, taking a drag before he goes on, "Look, man. I promise I won't laugh at you. I'm just wondering why you're out on the highway biking drunk at three in the morning."

"I'm not drunk," protests Tweek, though he's not certain this is true. He's been drinking steadily all day, because he's depressed and because there's a convict living in South Park again.

"Yeah, okay, sure," Craig replies, "I'm serious, though."

"I thought – um," Tweek blushes, "I thought I heard a UFO. But it was just your car."

For an awful second, Tweek is convinced that Craig is going to laugh. He's smiling a little bit, Tweek thinks, though he can't exactly tell in the dark.

But Craig doesn't laugh. He smokes a little more and answers, "That's cool."

"…why were you out here?" Tweek asks, "You weren't burying a body, were you?"

This time, Craig does laugh. Smoke puffs out of his lungs with each chuckle, and he shakes his head, catching his breath before he speaks, "You are paranoid as fuck, Tweek. You can't tell anybody about this – I'm not supposed to be doing this stuff since they took my license, but I'm getting back into racing and stuff. I couldn't sleep, so I came out to do a practice run with Martha here." Craig pats the hood of the car.

"I won't tell," Tweek solemnly swears.

"Good," Craig answers, "Cause if anybody finds out, my parole officer is going to knife me and bury _my_ body out here."

"I don't think parole officers are allowed to do that," Tweek tells Craig.

Craig smiles a little at that and lifts back off of his car – Martha, he called it. He sits down on the ground next to a patch of wildflowers and then lies back. He exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke and then asks, "So South Park's just the same as I left it, huh?"

"I guess so," Tweek says, "I think Stan and Kyle might be a thing, though." Tweek has always envied their friendship – he never had a best friend like that, and he doubts that he'll ever have a boyfriend like that, either. Tweek is too batshit for romantic relationships. Or any relationships, really. Everybody thinks that's weird, and they're right.

Tweek has long been resigned to a life of masturbation and television by himself. It used to bother him, but not anymore. He likes being by himself. He used to think that being by himself was scary, but now he thinks that other people are worse. At least Tweek knows what's going on in his own mind.

"There's a shocker," Craig says. He rolls his eyes and flicks his cigarette butt out into the field.

"Dude," Tweek scolds, "You can't do that, pretty much the whole state is on fire." He drops his bike and stumbles in the direction of the cigarette butt. He finds it and stomps it, kicking dirt over it until he's satisfied that it won't be setting South Park, or the nearby woods, on fire. Colorado's had a rough summer so far, and Tweek doesn't want to be on the morning news as 'one of the boys that set the South Park fire.'

"Okay, Smokey the Bear," Craig drawls, "You want a ride back to your place? You're kind of drunk, man."

"Are you going to murder me and stash my body?" asks Tweek.

"Oh no, my plans are ruined," Craig responds, sarcastic, "What is with you and murder, dude? Just let me give you a ride home. I'm being gentlemanly."

"If you didn't murder anybody, how come you got arrested? Was it drugs?" Tweek asks.

Craig goes quiet. He sits up and pulls his knees up to his chest. "Honestly," he begins, "It's embarrassing. I'm kind of not going to talk about it."

Tweek frowns but replies, "Okay." He guesses that he wouldn't want Craig to know about his own stupid things. And Tweek does a lot of stupid things. He says, "I think I'll take that ride now."

Tweek helps pull Craig onto his feet, and Craig helps Tweek load his bike onto the rack that he has mounted on the back of Martha.

Martha doesn't have air conditioning, but Craig plays good music as they speed back toward town. It's something that Tweek doesn't recognize but has good guitar, and makes him want to melt back into the seats and fall asleep. The car smells of cigarettes and pine-scented air freshener. It's a combination that Tweek didn't know that he could like, but does. It's odd, but good. Maybe he just feels nice because he's drunk. Whatever the reason, he likes it.

Craig pulls up to Tweek's house, but as Tweek puts his hand on the car door's latch, Craig stops him, saying, "Let me help you with your bike again, okay?"

Craig helps lift the bike off of the back of Martha and chain it back into place on the front porch. He pulls his hat off to run a hand through his messy hair and glances at Tweek. He says, "You probably shouldn't bike drunk. I'm just saying, man."

"I don't think it's really your business," Tweek tells him.

Craig shrugs at that and pushes his hat back into place on his head before he answers, "Can't really argue with that, I guess. I'll see you around."

"Yeah. See you."

Tweek watches Craig cut through their lawn and climb back into his car. He waits on the porch until Craig is all the way down the block, turning to get onto the next street over – the street where he lives. Lived. Or both.

Instead of watching X-Files, Tweek crawls into his bed. He doesn't sleep, just thinks. Things don't happen in South Park anymore – so why does he feel like they're going to start happening again?

Whatever's going on, Tweek hopes that it's aliens.

**XXX**

**Yes – this is a new chapter Creek fic. I am still going to finish my Kenbe fic, but I wanted to write this out so I could at least get the idea into words. Thank you all for reading!**


	2. Oh Baby, If You Try

**Chapter Track: Simple Man – Lynyrd Skynyrd **

Craig rolls over in his bed and checks the time on his cell. It's almost two in the afternoon, but he's not surprised that he slept so long after the night that he had. He knows it wasn't a good idea to take Martha out, especially since he's not allowed to drive, but this _itch_ crept up on him, the one where his fingers need to be on a steering wheel and his foot on a gas pedal, and he needs to be zipping down a highway as fast as his little junker will take him.

And then there was Tweek.

Craig hadn't expected that at all. In all honesty, while Tweek seems as though the past two years have made him calmer, he's still nutty and uptight – and kind of attractive, but still. The guy doesn't seem to know how to have fun, unless it's alien-related, maybe. While strange, Craig can't say he's surprised by Tweek's obsession with aliens. The guy _is_ obsessed…why else would he bike all the way out to the highway at three in the morning when he's drunk and unstable?

With a groan, Craig slumps out of bed. It's odd to be back in his bedroom. His parents cleaned it while he was away, but it otherwise looks the same, with all his model cars lining the shelves on his walls, the Red Racer posters, the Hot Wheels sheets fitted over the twin bed that he's for as long as he can remember. The bed sheets smell clean but musty. They've been left alone too long without somebody too sleep in them.

He stretches and trudges across the hallway to the bathroom, where he runs a brush through his ratty hair. He's let it go so long that it almost touches his shoulders, and Craig wonders if he should care about that – but doesn't. He strips off his pajama pants and yawns, stepping into the shower. The only products inside belong to his sister, and he resigns himself to using her hair stuff and fruit body wash as he scrubs himself clean under the spray of hot water. He lingers longer than he needs to, but it's nice to have a good, hot shower and no time limit to how long he's allowed inside it.

Craig sniffs at a bottle of something-or-other that belongs to Ruby. The bottle says it's for hair, and so he assumes that it's shampoo and douses his head in it.

When he's washed the gunk out and finished, Craig steps out and towels himself dry on the blue bath mat, redressing in his same pajama pants. He combs his hair before he heads downstairs for breakfast.

Ruby is no place to be found and his dad is probably at work. His mom is carrying a basket of dirty laundry toward the washer and dryer, but shrieks when she sees him, dropping the basket onto the floor.

"Jesus, mom, what the hell was that?" asks Craig, scratching a hand through his wet hair, which doesn't feel clean, but instead, kind of greasy.

"Craig _Joseph Tucker_, what on earth are those?" his mom points to his chest.

Riiiight.

"Nipple piercings?" he responds.

His mom rolls her eyes skyward and rubs a hand over her forehead. She purses her lips at him and says, "That's lovely, honey. Are there any other surprises that you brought back with you?"

"Uh," Craig turns and points to his back, "But it's only little, it's not like I can't cover it up or anything."

"_Craig_!"

"What?"

"Christ, what kind of place did you get sent to? The party prison? I have half a mind to call them up and ask exactly how my son managed to come back with a tattoo and – and – _nipple piercings_," she sniffs, and bends over to collect the laundry from the floor, stuffing it back into the basket and tromping down to the laundry room.

At least that fiasco is half-over, but God knows when his mom relays the news of his 'Tucker' tattoo (it's not even that big, for fuck's sake) and the nipple piercings, his dad is going to give him the lecture of a lifetime – probably something about looking like a hoodlum and blah, blah, blah. It's not like anybody's going to know the difference with his shirt on, but whatever.

Craig pulls down a cereal bowl and a half-eaten box of Cocoa Pebbles, debating whether or not he needs coffee to pull him out of his morning funk.

His thoughts drift back to last night again. He's curious about Tweek, but he wonders if that's just a side effect of being gone for so long. He's a little curious about everybody, at least his friends. He hasn't spoken to Clyde and Token yet nor have they to him, though he knows they know that he's been released.

"_Craig Tucker_!"

"What did I do now?" he calls back to his mom, mouth full of cereal.

"Come here. Right now," she commands from the laundry room.

Craig sighs and brings his cereal with him. He spoons a bite into his mouth and asks, "What?" as he reaches the door to the laundry room.

His mom holds up a handful of cigarettes in one hand and his shorts in the other, "What are these?"

"Cigarettes," he answers. He chews his cereal and swallows, "Why?"

"Why? You're underage, you idiot," his mom rants, "I want you to flush them. Now, Craig. And I will watch."

"Aw, mom," he complains.

"Now."

Craig sets his bowl of leftover milk and Cocoa Pebbles shrapnel and takes the cigarettes from his mom's grip with a defeated exhale. She hovers over him with her arms folded and brow cocked as he marches to the downstairs bathroom and dumps them into the toilet.

"Don't pout at me," she snips, when Craig glances back at her with a frown. He flushes them – there goes the money he traded for those to Kenny McCormick.

"If I catch you with those again, I am going to ground you," she warns.

She won't. Craig has never been grounded in his life. But still, he'll remember to be more careful with where he leaves those things.

"And put that bowl in the sink," she orders as he starts back out.

Craig rolls his eyes but obeys, taking his bowl from its perch in the laundry room. He rinses it out and stacks it on top of the others in the sink before he walks back upstairs to his room. His old clothes are all kind of tight on him, and he doubts that his parents have the money to do anything to fix that for him. He settles for another pair of shorts and a Red Racer t-shirt, finishing it with his old hat. He missed his hat.

He also misses his guinea pigs, but his parents sold them while he was away. He gets it, they didn't want the responsibility, but he's still depressed when he looks at the empty space in his room across from his bed.

Craig takes up his cell again and punches in Token's old number. He hopes it's still the same.

"Craig?" Token answers.

"Yeah, it's me," he says, feeling relieved, "I was wondering if you and Clyde maybe wanted to chill or something, since I'm back in town."

A short silence follows on the other line before Token answers, "I don't know, dude."

"Don't know what? What does that mean?" Craig says back.

"Look, no offense, but you just got out of juvenile hall," Token responds, "I don't think my parents would be that keen on having you around, okay?"

Craig doesn't like the sound of that. He says, "Then we can go see a movie or something. I don't even know what's out now. Anything good?"

"Craig," Token says, and he heaves a sigh. Somewhere in the background, Craig hears a whoop that sounds distinctly like Clyde celebrating a video game-related victory, and feels his guts twist up into a knot as Token goes on, "I just can't, dude. I'll talk to you later." The phone clicks as Token hangs up.

For a moment, Craig just stands there.

What the fuck was that?

He knew that things would inevitably be different upon his victorious return, but he didn't know that they'd be _this_ kind of different. He just thought that it would be the regular kind of stuff that South Park has to offer, like such and such got glasses and so and so is dating this guy, the kind of stuff that he doesn't give half a stinking shit about.

Glumly, Craig pulls socks onto his feet and slips them into ill-fitting sneakers. He ducks downstairs and announces, "I'm going on a walk," to his mom, though he doesn't know where he intends to go, since his own friends don't want to hang out with him.

"Be back for dinner," she calls back.

It is hot outside, miserably hot, and Craig sighs when he reaches into his pocket and remembers that he has no cigarettes. This is bullshit – it's not like he was hurting anybody with all the stuff that went down and landed him in juvie. Nobody but Ruby knew about it for forever, and truth be told, Craig is still not even a little bit sorry. He thinks that might have been a point against him – he told the judge he wasn't sorry, and he meant it.

This is bullshit.

Craig hates feeling all lonely and sorry for himself, and he doesn't want to fucking _wallow_.

He pulls his phone out of his pocket again and scrolls through his contacts. He has few options if everybody's parents are of the same mind as the Blacks. He doesn't know if he's insane for doing it, but he pulls up Kenny's contact page and dials his number. He's pretty sure the only people in town that don't give a damn if you've been in the slammer are the McCormicks.

"Dude, you smoke all those cigs already?" is how Kenny answers Craig's call.

"My mom made me flush them," Craig sighs, "Can I come over?"

"Really? Dude, that's fucked up," Kenny responds, "But, uh, yeah. Sure. Go for it. Karen and I are just watching some quality television together, but we could always smoke a bowl or something."

Craig has had few experiences with weed (a grand total of two), but today has been pretty shitty, so he agrees, "Yeah. Cool. That sounds good. I'll be over in a few."

Kenny isn't as irritating as Craig once found him. Things changed when Kenny popped up at juvie for a measly three months for possession. Craig had already been there for almost a year, and it was a relief to see a familiar face beyond his family's visits every weekend.

Besides, Kenny was Craig's first kiss. You can't shake that kind of nostalgia.

Craig takes the scenic route to get to the McCormicks' house, in no hurry. He treks by Stark's Pond, where a couple of guys are fishing and some kids are playing at the bank, skipping rocks out and making the surface ripple. Craig used to be one of those kids – he and Clyde and Token and occasionally one of the other guys would skip stones and laugh and joke. Craig would listen while the others talked about girls and think about how he wasn't certain he was as interested girls as he was supposed to be.

Nothing like a kiss from Kenny McCormick to have it hit you that you're just not attracted to women.

Kenny lives in a shabby-looking neighborhood on the other side of the train tracks, a mix of RVs and rectangular mobile homes that have cheap monthly rent. The McCormick house itself is an ugly dirty mint green color. Three broken down cars are parked along the street in front of it – Craig wonders if any of them are Kenny's racing car of choice these days.

Craig cuts through their lawn. The grass is brown and crunchy, overrun with weeds and wildflowers.

When he knocks on the door, Karen McCormick answers it. She – definitely looks older.

"Hey," she says, "Me and Kenny are just finishing this episode of Hoarders."

"Hello gorgeous," Kenny acknowledges Craig with a lift of his beer bottle.

Craig flips him off. He asks, "When are we getting this party started?"

"As soon as the show's over, chill," Kenny responds.

Craig rolls his eyes. He hesitates before sitting on the McCormicks' stained denim couch, and rests his head on his hand with a sigh.

"Shitty day?" Kenny queries.

Craig shrugs, "Kind of, yeah."

"You wanna talk about it?" asks Kenny.

Craig replies, "I don't need a therapist, McCormick."

"All right, all right. Just checking," Kenny holds up his hands in defense and pulls off of his cheap beer.

Craig turns his brain off and watches the conclusion of the show while listening to Kenny and Karen's running commentary. He doesn't snap out of it until Kenny flips off the television and nudges Craig's foot with his. He says, "You still up for smoking, man?"

"Yeah," Craig says. He thinks he'd like for his brain to quiet down at least. His thoughts seem to be on a repeat of his brief conversation with Token and his odd conversation with Tweek last night. He starts to wonder if it wouldn't be better for him to just jump back into juvie so he wouldn't have to deal with any of this shit. Juvie rules are easier to follow, simple shit.

Kenny leans over and gives his little a sloppy kiss on the cheek and says, "You be good, baby girl," before he stands and stretches his arms above his head. He cocks his head at the stairs and Craig follows his lead up to Kenny's bedroom.

It is, as expected, a wreck. Kenny's floor is coated in dirty clothes and balled-up tissues. It smells like weed and body odor. In the corner his bed is still the same – the race car bed that used to belong to Token. When Token hit puberty, he wanted a bed better suited to an adult, he had said, and so his parents donated it to charity. It ended up at the McCormick's no more than a day later.

Craig wishes that he had a race car bed.

Kenny rummages around in his closet and pulls back with a glass pipe that he tosses to Craig. He asks, "So, why're you hanging out with me and not with Token and Clyde?"

"Apparently, I'm a bad influence," answers Craig.

"What a load of horseshit," remarks Kenny, crossing the room. He opens his sock drawer and pulls out a worn Ziploc baggie. He opens the bag and motions for Craig to hand him the pipe. As he starts packing a bowl, Kenny continues, "Man, if you're a bad influence, then what does that make me?"

"A worse influence, I guess," Craig answers, "They don't know what I did that got me arrested, though."

"What? Why?" Kenny asks, "Why don't you just tell them?"

"Because. It's embarrassing."

"Nah, man. That's not embarrassing," Kenny says, "I still don't think that you did anything wrong."

"I thought you just said that because you like my dick," Craig says. He kicks aside a pair of crumpled jeans with the toe of his shoe and sits on the edge of Kenny's racecar bed, flopping back onto the mattress. Kenny's sheets look they were dredged up from a little girl's room in 1973, and bets that he isn't far off.

Kenny takes up his lighter and flicks it to life, lighting up and inhaling. He grins and sighs out a small cloud of smoke before scooting back onto the bed next to Craig. He passes the pipe to Craig and answers, "I like your dick, and I don't think you did anything wrong. I can think both things at once, you know."

"Whatever," mutters Craig. He lights the pipe and inhales, which ends in a coughing fit. Kenny takes the pipe and lighter back as Craig thumps his hand against his chest.

"Easy there, tiger," Kenny pats Craig's head, and then takes his hat, pulling it over his blond hair. He asks, "Do I look as handsome as you if I wear your ugly hat?"

Craig wheezes and punches Kenny's arm with a, "Never."

"Your hair is especially shiny today, Craig," Kenny mentions. He reaches over and runs his fingers through it. His grin broadens, and he remarks, "And it's all silky and manageable."

"Fuck off," Craig responds, "and give me that pipe back."

For a few minutes, Kenny and Craig smoke together without speaking. It's comfortable, and Craig appreciates that Kenny is willing to hang around him without needing anything to be said. Craig doesn't need too many people around, but sometimes it's nice to have somebody to just sit with him.

"How was everything after I got released?" asks Kenny.

Craig answers, "Eh, same old. Did do this, though." He lifts up his shirt to show Kenny the piercings.

Kenny whistles, "Very sexy, Tucker. I think it adds a lot of appeal."

"How's everything been here?" asks Craig.

"Meh," shrugs Kenny, "I'm ninety-nine point nine percent sure that Stan and Kyle are fucking, but they're pretty tight-lipped about the whole ordeal. Everything else is same as always. Cartman pines after Wendy and Wendy hates him, I'm kind of seeing Bebe and also kind of seeing Butters – the usual."

"Butters Stotch?" Craig lifts a brow, "Why?"

"If you had ever seen that boy's naked ass, you wouldn't need to ask me that question," Kenny responds tartly.

"Whatever floats your boat, I guess," Craig says, "I saw Tweek the other day. He's gotten kind of good-looking."

"You have a boner for Tweek?" laughs Kenny.

Craig shoves Kenny but he only laughs harder. He mutters, "I don't have a boner for Tweek. I just think he's kind of – pretty."

"He probably thinks you're a murderer or something," Kenny responds. He sets the pipe aside and wiggles back onto his pillow with a sleepy smile on his face.

Craig responds to that, "He definitely thinks I'm a murderer, dude. He was out on the highway at like, three am, and I stopped for him. He asked me if I was burying bodies."

"Dude, you weren't racing, were you? You know how much shit you'll be in if you get caught?" Kenny asks.

Craig waves him off, "Yeah, I was giving Martha a test drive. So anyway, I ask him what the hell he's doing out there, because he's just there with his bike and this bag and he freaking reeks of liquor, right? And he was like 'I thought I heard a UFO.' I had no idea he was into that stuff."

"Oh, dude, he totally is," Kenny says, "He runs this alien blog or whatever, and Cartman likes to leave nasty comments on it all the time."

"Why? That's dumb," Craig says back. He frowns.

"I dunno," Kenny replies, "Cartman gets off on being a dickhead. You know that. He thinks that everybody else is stupider than him."

"Some things never change, I guess," Craig comments.

Craig rolls onto his side and traces the floral pattern on Kenny's sheets with the tip of his finger. He doesn't know why, but he finds himself wondering if Tweek Tweak might be one of the things in South Park that _has_ changed.

Maybe he'll just have to find out.

**XXX**

**Thank you all for your continued support!**


	3. Inside My Petri Dish

**Chapter Track: Numb – Marina and the Diamonds**

Tweek picks at his dinner, moving the food around the plate instead of eating. This is his usual tactic, and later he'll make up for the lack of food with a bag of Cheetos and a TV marathon. He never feels hungry with his parents sitting across from him.

Tonight, for the most part, they seem to be talking over him, the kind of conversation of which he is the subject, but is not a part of. He stopped listening when they started discussing his anxiety medication as though he was sitting at the same table.

"I don't know that I like him being medicated," his mom said.

That's stupid, Tweek thinks, because it does actually help him.

"We're doing the best that we can with what we have to work with, dear," his dad responds.

Like he's some sort of project, and not their child.

That was where Tweek shut down and started carving his mashed potatoes into the shape of a flower. He'll have to sit at the dinner table for at least a half hour before they'll excuse him, and when Tweek hit about eleven, his parents banned reading from supper time. Up until that point, he'd learned to bring along his latest book with him and bury his nose in it, so he could focus on something better than his parents' rambling.

"Tweek, are you listening?"

Tweek's head jerks up. Both his mom and dad are blinking at him expectantly, and he realizes that they must have asked him a question while he got lost in carving out an intricate potato-leaf on his plate. He clears his throat and responds, "Um, sorry. What did you say?"

"I asked how your shift at the shop was today, son," his dad replies.

"Oh…" Tweek mumbles. He shifts uncomfortably in his chair and thinks of a good answer that will put them off. The reality is that he read a few chapters of his new book, a thick one about humans and robots co-existing, and that Craig Tucker was there again for the fourth day in a row. On the second day, Tweek finally worked up the (sober) courage to ask what the hell Craig was even doing. Apparently, his summer homework.

Tweek had replied that he didn't know that murderers cared about summer homework.

And then he had said that he was sorry, because he hadn't meant to say that thought out loud.

But Craig laughed and said, "Yeah, even I need to graduate, man." That was it, too. Nothing else. Craig just stuck his headphones back in and went back to flipping through the anatomy packet that Tweek had finished within the first week of summer vacation.

But Tweek doesn't know that his parents would care to hear that most of the shift was his book and a felon doing homework at one of their booths, so he says, "It was productive."

"Oh?" his mom says, "Go on, sweetie."

"Um," Tweek says, hoping that they'd get bored with him after one answer, "I got a couple customers to buy some snacks with their coffee." Actually, the only person that he'd convinced was Butters, and Butters is always happy to buy a muffin with his _soy vanilla latte with two extra pumps_.

Tweek knows the drink of everybody in town, even if they have multiple ones, like Kyle Broflovski. Kyle thinks he's changing it up, but he rotates his drinks in a pattern (caramel macchiato, hazelnut latte, earl grey tea – in that order).

"Excellent, excellent," his father says, "Good work. I'm glad that you're learning the ropes. You know, when I first started in the coffee industry, I was wary of muffins. I thought, coffee shops should be for coffee. But then muffins changed my mind, son, and it was all for the better."

"Yeah," Tweek agrees, "Muffins are great, Dad."

Tweek is excused five minutes later, and hides in his bedroom until he hears his parents switching all the downstairs lights off. When their bedroom door closes, he's already slung his Alien Bag over his shoulder and crammed his feet into his favorite boots. He takes his book, too, just in case he doesn't spot anything unusual and has to entertain himself.

Downstairs, Tweek packs a half-eaten bag of Cheetos and a thermos of coffee and Bailey's. He slips out of the house quiet as a mouse, and tromps along the sidewalk outside in slow steps. He likes being outside at night, even if it can be scary sometimes. He always has his flashlight – it's the kind that straps around your head. He keeps it on his Alienware baseball hat that he got for free when he bought his laptop. Sometimes he'll forget to put it on when he's no place near sober, though.

It's a temperate night. Tweek is comfortable in his t-shirt and jeans. He thinks he might be sad when winter swings around. He likes being able to wear loose, thin summer clothes. Winter clothes are so constricting.

"Are you wearing a baseball hat with a flashlight strapped to it."

"Jesus _Christ_!" Tweek snaps. He backs up a step and trips over the uneven sidewalk, landing on his ass in a tangled heap.

Above him, Craig stands in pajamas: an undershirt, boxer shorts with Hotwheels cars racing around them in a zigzag pattern, and a pair of sandals – with socks.

"Well, you're wearing lesbian sandals and socks," Tweek says back.

Craig glances down at his feet and exhales a cloud of cigarette smoke.

"They're hiking sandals," he says, "and my toes were cold."

"Okay, well, whatever," is all that Tweek can manage. He pushes himself to his feet and shuffles past Craig to make it to the end of their street.

"Hey, wait," Craig says, and jogs to catch up with him. He matches Tweek's quick pace and asks, "Where are you going, dude? It's like almost midnight."

"I'm hunting," Tweek says, "at Stark's Pond. It's a hotspot for alien activity. I don't want to miss anything."

"Do you do this every night?" asks Craig.

"Almost, I guess," shrugs Tweek, "Why? Plotting my murder?"

Craig rolls his eyes and flicks his cigarette butt into the middle of the street. He says, "Nah, man. You're just the only interesting person in this shit town. I forgot how lame it is here."

Tweek stops mid-walk to gawk at Craig. "I'm not interesting," he squeaks, "I'm weird – everybody says so."

"Yeah? Everybody's lame," Craig answers, "How do you hunt aliens, anyway? Is it like hunting deer? My dad took me hunting a couple times when I was little and stuff."

If Tweek were not already gawking, he'd have surely started then. Nobody ever asks him about his aliens. Mostly, people just roll their eyes at him and tell him that he's strange, or off-beat, or a selection of less kind insults.

"Well – I," Tweek manages, and quiets, "Nobody's ever asked me that before."

"So, you don't know what you do," Craig says.

"No! I – I'm surprised," Tweek says. He pulls his thermos out of his bag and pops open the top with shaking fingers, taking a long drink of coffee and alcohol to calm his nerves. He goes on, "Uh, I guess, I like, walk in the woods? And I, um, shine my flashlight around. And I have binoculars that I look through if I see something."

"Have you ever seen a UFO for real?"

"When I was a kid," Tweek whispers, "But don't tell anybody I said that! Nobody believes that it happened."

Craig makes a zipping motion over his lips and says, "You're secret's safe with me, weirdo."

Tweek almost protests at the name, but then doesn't, because the way that Craig says 'weirdo' isn't like how other people say it, with venom and condescension, like they think that they're better than him because he believes in something that they don't. The way that Craig says 'weirdo' makes Tweek's stomach flip, and it feels like his insides are trying to tie themselves in tight knots inside him.

It feels _awful._

"Whoa, dude, you okay?" asks Craig, "You got all like – pale. I mean, paler than usual."

"I'm fine," Tweek says. He keeps walking, and Craig follows him. He thinks about snapping at Craig to go away, but for some reason can manage the words, or energy enough to angry at Craig. For being a criminal, Craig is actually kind of nice, Tweek has noticed.

But he does make Tweek nervous, in the sick-to-his-stomach type of way.

Tweek needs something to fidget with.

He digs around in his Alien Bag and takes out the toy that he stuffed in there. He won't tell Craig that it makes him feel better to have a pretend sonic screwdriver on his person, but Tweek feels less like he'll be in danger if he has it. He presses the switch that makes the blue tip glow and the sonic noise buzz.

"Is that a fucking sonic screwdriver?" Craig asks. He tries to snatch it out of Tweek's hand, but Tweek yanks his hand back and holds the screwdriver to his chest with both hands.

"It's only a pretend one," he defends, "Get your own. They sell them at the comic book store."

"Yeah, because I totally thought that was a real sonic screwdriver," Craig snips back, "Hey, that one's the Tenth Doctor's, too. He's my favorite. My car's named Martha 'cause she's my favorite companion."

"Um," is all that Tweek can get out. He thinks he's blushing, because he didn't realize that Craig would like that kind of thing. Craig is cool. He likes cars and has nice hair, and Tweek is pretty sure that he can see the shadows of nipple rings under Craig's undershirt. Those things are what cool people do, and Tweek has figured that all those things are also why he gets so flustered around Craig – beyond the whole murderer thing, of course.

But this, no this, is something much more terrible.

Because Tweek is flustered in _that_ way.

"Do you have a favorite companion?" asks Craig, "I know lots of people have shit against Martha, but she's a badass. You're not a Martha hater, are you?"

"No," Tweek gets out, "No, Martha's cool. I just, um. I liked Donna best."

"I like you," Craig says.

"Oh," Tweek is pink in the face, and reaches up to switch off his head flashlight, hoping that it won't be so obvious in the dark.

"Everybody else here sucks," complains Craig. He kicks a pebble down the sidewalk and says, "My friends are being dicks and ignoring me, and everybody else is like, exactly the same as they were when I left. I guess Kenny's okay, but he doesn't wander around at midnight with a flashlight on his head, so."

Craig leans over and closes the space between them. He pushes his lips clumsily against Tweek's, and Tweek doesn't know what to do beyond standing still and letting it happen. Craig has soft lips but a scratchy jaw, and he tastes like cigarettes, which Tweek isn't sure that he likes.

Craig pulls away when Tweek doesn't move into the kiss, and asks, "Sorry. Are you not into guys?"

"Um. Uh," Tweek fiddles with the switch on his sonic screwdriver and says, "I don't know. Boys are nice, I guess. Nobody's ever wanted to – to kiss me or anything, though. I don't know how to do it. Maybe I should google it in case you ever feel like kissing me again?" He's stammering through his words, bright red in the cover of the dark, and shaking with nerves.

Craig lets out a loud belly-laugh that echoes down the empty street. He reaches over to touch Tweek's arm, and Tweek twitches away. He still smiles at Tweek, though, and replies, "Man, if you don't want to kiss me, then I'm not gonna kiss you."

"But what if – what if you want to?" asks Tweek.

"If everybody did shit just because they want to, it would be anarchy," Craig says, "And I'm not one of those goth shitheads that thinks that that would be cool."

Silence falls between them. Tweek tears his eyes away from Craig's and stares fixedly at his boots. He wonders if he should say something, but he doesn't know what to say, and ends up flicking the switch on his sonic screwdriver over and over to fill the flat silence with its buzz.

"But hey, if you decide that you want me to kiss you, I can always just show you the works," Craig says, "I'm not that good at it, honestly. I've only kissed a couple of guys, so."

"I didn't even know that you liked that," Tweek says.

Craig shrugs, "Yeah, I dunno, man. It's whatever. You're cute and you like Doctor Who."

"Okay," Tweek says, "Okay. I don't know that I want to do any kissing right now. It makes me nervous. But I like your hair."

"Thanks," Craig says back, "I grew it myself."

That teases a smile out of Tweek.

Craig sticks his thumb back toward his house and goes on, "So, I'm totally out of it. I'm gonna crash, but I'll be working on my summer homework again tomorrow. I'll see you around." And without another word, Craig turns and retreats back down the street, humming tunelessly.

Tweek doesn't move until after he hears the sound of Craig's front door opening and closing break the silence of the empty street. And even then, he just shifts his weight from one foot to another for a few long minutes. He doesn't know how long he stands there, but by the time that he tucks his sonic screwdriver back into his Alien Bag, his coffee and Bailey's has gone cold.

He walks back home feeling strangely blank, unable to thread his thoughts together. When he makes it home, he locks the door behind him. He doesn't feel like watching X-Files. He doesn't think that he could focus on the show.

He actually feels kind of –

Tired.

Tweek clambers up the stairs and slips into his bedroom. He sheds his hat and Alien Bag but doesn't bother with his boots before he collapses into his blankets, squeezing his pillow to his cheek. A reel of Craig's kiss whirls through his brain, and his stomach and his heart and his mind can't agree on whether or not they liked it. He tasted funny but his lips were nice, and even though Craig's stubble scraped at Tweek's cheek, he kind of liked the feeling.

Tweek reaches up and feels along his face.

Yeah, he'll have to decide how he feels about that kiss later.

**xxx**

**Thanks for reading! I know this was a short chapter – the story will pick up a little from here.**


	4. Take It In and Spit It Out

**Chapter Track: Sinkin' Down – Scott H. Biram**

Craig starts his mornings early – he's used to waking up early because of the past couple of years, but he also likes that it helps him avoid his family until later. He loves his family, he really does, but after everything that happened, they still look at him differently. It's all in the face. He can tell, just how his mom frowns a little, his dad's eyes shift away, how he'll catch his sister looking at him like somebody looks at a stranger.

He did it for them, and maybe he shouldn't have done it. It landed him in juvie, and his parents look at him funny. Like they don't even know who he is.

"Is it the nipple rings?" Craig had snapped at his mom last night over dinner, "Because I'll take them out, if you'd just treat me like your fucking kid again."

She'd rubbed a hand over her face and replied in an exhausted voice, "No, Craig. It's not your piercings. We're just getting used to having you back in the house, honey."

"Bullshit," he'd said – and he figures he should apologize for this later – and he flipped her off, locking himself in his bedroom, where he watched porn for a solid three hour block, got himself off, and scrolled through the internet until he felt too depressed to watch cat videos.

That's when he'd gone out to smoke, when it was safe to creep downstairs and stand on his porch outside, where it was quiet, and he could think. Admittedly, Craig hadn't much time to think. He'd been out for only a few seconds, trying not to dwell on his shitty friends ignoring him or his weird family or Tweek Tweak – only that Tweek appeared instants later.

At first, Craig didn't know who the fuck was walking down the street. All he saw was a flashlight floating toward him like some will-o'-the-wisp shit, and he'd checked to make sure that it was indeed a cigarette in his hand and not something stronger.

And, like an asshole, he ended up kissing the dude.

Craig looks at his reflection in the mirror and inwardly groans at the memory. He'd scared the shit out of Tweek, and that wasn't what he wanted to do. Yeah, he wanted to kiss the guy. He _still_ wants to kiss the guy. But he'd meant to approach it slowly. Like a lion stalking a gazelle or something poetic like that. But maybe not quite so predatory? Fuck it, it's too early for this shit.

Upon an inspection of his reflection, Craig doesn't _think_ that Tweek didn't want to kiss him because he's unattractive. He's a little pimply, sure, but Tweek didn't even see the backne. Craig has a decent face. His teeth are little crooked and his nose a little sharp, but it's all standard fare. At least he doesn't have a Broflovski-style fro and Kyle's big nose. There's some small comfort in that.

As soon as Craig dresses for the day, he slings his backpack over his shoulder and lights a cigarette to start his walk toward Tweak Bros. It's an atypically gray day for summer, with ironclad clouds and a slight breeze in the warm air.

The trek isn't long – Craig stubs out his cigarette in the ashtray outside of the coffee shop before pushing open the door and stepping in. He's about to greet Tweek with rehearsed words of apology, but Tweek isn't at the counter. It's his mom, her short hair framing her face in waves, wearing an apron on over a yellow dress.

His first assumption as he approaches the counter is that he must have really fucked up, if Tweek is going so far to avoid Craig that he isn't showing up for work.

Damn it.

Craig has been doing a spectacular job of screwing things up when he didn't mean to lately.

"Hey Mrs. Tweak," Craig says, "Where's Tweek?"

She gives him a smile and says, "Oh, he's in one of his sleeps. He doesn't sleep much, so when he does, it can be for quite a while. What can I get you?"

"Um, a bottomless coffee for here and a breakfast burrito," he says, "…is Tweek okay?"

Mrs. Tweak putters back to fill a mug with black coffee and responds, "Oh, he's fine, dear. He's just prone to drama."

Craig doesn't know that having a fucked up sleep schedule means that Tweek is a drama queen, but he doesn't think he should say that, so he accepts his coffee and burrito and pays in crumpled bills before sitting in the back.

He would be lying if he said that he wasn't a little disappointed, but he does have a lot of shit to do before school starts up again, and whether or not there's a cute barista working, he should at least try to get it done.

Still, his mind drifts, and instead of doing his summer homework, Craig ends up watching the sky crack open and spill rain onto Main Street while he nurses his coffee. He fiddles with his phone and starts a text to Token – "hey man i get that you dont wanna hang out with me but maybe you could at least text me back or something" but then erases everything but "hey" and sends just that, instead.

It occurs to him that he doesn't really have friends anymore.

He sort of has Kenny, he guesses, but Kenny has other friends and people to be with that aren't Craig. He's immersed in a balancing act involving both Butters and Bebe, and has three temperamental drama queens for best friends. That's why Craig always liked his friends best, through everything, because Clyde and Token and Jason have always been level-headed – more quiet than Kenny and his friends.

This whole joint has changed. He doesn't like the feeling it gives him.

He's lonely.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Craig mutters. He tosses his books haphazardly back into his backpack and thanks Mrs. Tweak for the coffee on his way out.

He dials Kenny's number despite his insecurity, and Kenny picks up on the second ring. He greets Craig with a, "Hey, man. I was hoping you'd call. So, listen, I know you're not doing racing stuff anymore, but tonight we're driving out to some back roads and having a showdown with some of the guys. You can like, come and watch if you want."

Craig gnaws on his lower lip as he trudges back toward his house. He stops in the middle of the sidewalk when he realizes that he doesn't want there to be a chance that anybody in his family could hear this conversation, and slips into the alleyway between Tweak Bros and the plastic surgery place, leaning against the brick wall beside a dumpster.

Yeah, it's not ideal. It stinks like urine and week-old garbage, but at least nobody's going to catch Craig talking about breaking the law if he hides back here.

"Um," Craig gets out.

Kenny goes on before he can say anything else, "It's cool if you can't, dude. I know you're trying to keep your record cleaner this time around."

"No, I wanna come," he ends up saying.

It's a bad idea. Craig knows it is. Kenny's races are usually set up by his older brother's friends, a bunch of sloshed rednecks with mean streaks and huge-ass trucks. Beer flows freely at each event, and the harder stuff is served after everything's said and done. Craig loves racing Martha, loves showing up cocky twenty-somethings in their heavy duty vehicles, but he doesn't like the people there.

On the other hand, maybe now that he's seen some time behind bars, they'll treat him with a little more respect.

"If you're sure, dude," Kenny says, "Drop by my place at like, midnight? And follow me over there."

"Sounds cool," Craig agrees.

Kenny goodbyes him and hangs up. Craig fumbles with his phone as he treks back out to the sidewalk. He checks to see if Token has texted him back, but he hasn't – not that he expected any differently. He thinks about trying for Clyde, but pockets his phone and takes out a cigarette, instead.

He knows that going through with this isn't one of his better ideas, but he doesn't have anything else to do. He feels lost, which is weird, and Craig hates it. Part of who he is has always been knowing what he's doing with himself, and being sure of it. Now nothing makes sense – he's never known this feeling before.

So fuck it, he'll do what makes him feel good, and to hell with the consequences.

**xxx**

At eleven forty-five, Craig's parents have retired to their bedroom for the night. He can hear the laugh track from some sitcom echo from behind their closed door, and see the blue light from the television screen spilling out into the hallway. He creeps by as quietly as he can and pulls his hat further down on his head, like that'll camouflage who he is in the event that he's caught.

He makes it outside and fumbles with Martha's keys for a moment before getting them into the lock.

"You're going racing, aren't you?"

Craig jumps, and glares at Ruby, who stands on the other side of Martha with her arms folded across her chest. She lifts a brow at him and says, "You know you're going to get in so much fucking trouble if you get caught."

Smoky eyeshadow is swiped over her eyelids, and cat's eye liner curling past her eyes. She's wearing a low-cut black top and really, really tight jeans (jeggings? Craig's been away for a while, but he thinks he's got the right terminology).

"Yeah, and what are you up to? I doubt you're taking a trip to Weenie Hut Junior's," Craig snips back.

"Weenie Hut Junior's?" echoes Ruby, "Man, you have been gone a long time. Who the hell watches Spongebob anymore?"

"Shut up," Craig says, because it's all he can think to say.

Ruby bites down on her lower lip and says, "I'm going with Karen to the race."

"Why are you dressed like you're going clubbing?" Craig asks, "All the dudes there are nasty." He'd know. He's gay.

Ruby rolls her eyes at him and says, "Karen's my girlfriend, dumbass."

"What? Since when?"

"Since like a year ago," Ruby says.

"Does Kenny know?" is all Craig can think to ask.

Ruby shrugs, "Yeah, he knows. We made him promise he wouldn't tell you, so that I could."

Craig goes quiet for a minute and says, "You think mom and dad'll be pissed if they find out both their kids are gay?"

Ruby's brows go up into her styled red hair and she says, "Whoa. I dunno, I don't think they'll care. I think they sort of know about me and Karen anyway. Can I ride with you?"

Craig sighs and says, "Whatever, just don't tell mom and dad."

"I'd incriminate myself if I narked, stupid," Ruby mutters. She climbs into the passenger's seat and buckles herself in, sinking low into the seat as Craig starts the car.

In a handful of minutes, they're parked outside the McCormick's. Ruby climbs out when she sees Karen and Kenny emerge from the house. Karen's own clothing is less dressy than Ruby's – she just has on a worn out pink hoodie and some baggy jeans. Ruby hugs her and Kenny makes some joke that Craig can't hear but makes his sister laugh. Kenny waves as both girls climb into his truck.

Craig can't stop it. He feels shitty again, watching it all unfold. He doesn't know shit about anything, it feels like everybody around him knows what he used to know better than he ever will, because there's a gap in his timeline, like some Doctor Who timey-wimey-wibbly-shit.

Still, when Kenny's truck pulls away down the street, Craig follows him. They drive for a little more than forty-five minutes, away from South Park and further into the uninhabited corners of the mountains. The roads are pitch black, so dark that Kenny and Craig turn on their brights until they hit what's clearly the race site. Kevin and his friends have already built a makeshift firepit and lit it up. The beers have already made some rounds, leaving cans and bottles scattered on the ground.

When Craig parks Martha and ducks out, the whole place reeks of weed. A round of drunken laughter breaks out before Kenny and Craig approach, followed by their sisters, and Bebe, who gets a few leers as she pulls up to the bonfire with Kenny's arm wrapped around her waist.

Kevin stands up when they join the party, and scans Craig with a smoky chuckle, "Looks like Tucker's out of the slammer. Good to have you back, man."

Craig gives a halfhearted salute in response. Kevin McCormick looks about two times bigger than he was when Craig left. He's burly, with new ink twisting up his neck and down his thick arms.

One of Kevin's friends laughs, "He brought his lady car with him, too."

"Yeah, and she'll drive your stupid-ass excuse for a vehicle into the ground," Craig snaps back. Some of the others hoot with laughter, and the guy lifts his finger – which Craig returns gladly.

For a half an hour, they mostly dither around. Craig smokes through a cigarette but opts out of liquor and weed, not wanting fuck with his ability to race. It's only as soon as Kenny and Bebe start getting handsy with each other that Kevin finally says, "Okay, okay. Knock that shit off. Let's race." This sparks a drunken cheer.

The first two to go are two of Kevin's friends that Craig doesn't recognize. Following them, it'll be Kevin McCormick versus his own brother, and then Craig against the ugly guy that flipped him off.

"Guess juvie didn't change much," Bebe comments, when the first two come back, rowdy and shoving each other, and Kenny gives her a kiss to the cheek before jumping into his truck.

"Guess not," Craig replies, "Shit changed here, though."

"Has it?" Bebe says. Kenny waves to her from the window of his truck and revs his engine, and she blows a kiss to him.

"Yeah, it's like I came back to a whole different place," Craig says. He has no idea why, of all people, he's telling this to Bebe Stevens, but it leaks out anyway.

Kevin and Kenny jet off down the road, and Bebe hollers after them, "You got this, baby!" before she turns back to Craig with a shrug, "I always thought you kind of didn't care."

Craig scratches the back of his neck and responds, "I don't. I think. I don't know."

The conversation ends there, awkwardly, and Craig lights another cigarette just so that he's doing something with his hands. A few minutes later, Kenny's truck approaches a few feet in front of Kevin's, kicking up dust as it screeches to a halt. Kenny stumbles out a moment later and whoops. He jogs to Bebe and lifts her up off of the ground, kissing her hard in front of the rest of the group, earning a round of hooting and whistles.

"Your turn, fucker," Kevin says to Craig, pointing at Martha with one hand, and groping for a beer from the cooler with his other.

Craig slides into the driver's seat of his car and buckles himself in, flexing his fingers on the wheel. He loves this part – anticipating what's going to happen, but having no way of knowing how this shit will go down. Adrenaline spikes through his veins, a tingly feeling that he hasn't felt since he got tossed in juvie.

One of the girlfriends of the guys here waves at them over their makeshift starting line, and Craig and the ugly dude pull up to it.

And then it's time.

Craig jets off as fast as he can take Martha, but Ugly Dude's truck is just as fast. If he can edge him a little to the side – but Ugly dude has the same idea. He uses his truck to scrape against Martha's side. The sound makes Craig grit his teeth, but he keeps pushing forward, as fast as he can, around their shitty track. As long as he doesn't spin out, he'll be good. He just needs to keep his head in it.

His blood pumps hard and fast, filling his brain with the white noise of excitement as he starts to inch ahead of Ugly Dude and his beaten-up truck. Nobody beats Martha, Craig tells himself.

Just as the finish is in site Craig pulls one last move, and arrives seconds before Ugly Dude. He rolls out of Martha with a cry of victory, and says to Ugly Dude, "I told you, nobody fucks with Martha."

The party winds down after that. Mostly everybody follows Kevin to his apartment to hit the hard stuff, but Craig insists on taking Ruby home with him.

When they get there, he and Ruby swear to never tell their parents – as far as they're concerned, tonight never happened.

**xxx**

The next day, Tweek shows back up at the coffee shop, but he doesn't say anything about "having one of his sleeps" or even the kiss that happened. He greets Craig like usual and brings him coffee, but doesn't talk a lot.

And that's kind of how it continues to go. Craig tries to wheedle information out of Tweek, like his favorite Doctor Who episodes, or how he feels about Scully from the X-Files, but Tweek doesn't respond much. He looks tired most of the time, and almost always smells like he's been drinking.

For the first time since Craig has gotten back, he wonders if he should be more worried about someone other than himself. Tweek wasn't like this before, at least he doesn't think Tweek was. Tweek never really had any close friends, and he was in special classes at school, so he wasn't much of a highlight, but from a distance he seemed okay. Aloof, maybe, and definitely introverted, but not unhappy.

And if there's one thing that Craig's certain of now, it's that Tweek Tweak is some weird kind of fucked up.

In the midst of it all, summer passes by. Craig hates that it whips by them so quickly. Sooner than he thought possible, he's woken up his alarm on the first day of school. He brushes his teeth and pulls on his clothes, and pours himself a bowl of cereal before heading out to the bus stop (his parents have forbidden him to drive Martha to school, since he'll need a permit to park in the school lot and can't get it without a license, which he definitely doesn't have).

But by the time that Craig reaches the bus, a knot of nerves forms in his throat. Clyde and Token have spent the entire summer ignoring him, and though he doubts that they'll be on the bus, he knows that they'll be in school with him. They'll have to face each other. The high school isn't big at all. It's inevitable.

Craig sits next to Kenny on the bus, who regales him with stories of what he did last weekend (sleep with Butters) and how awesome it was (Craig does not want to think about it).

Before the bell rings, Craig sits alone in a bathroom stall on the second floor, smoking a cigarette so he'll maintain his sanity for as long as possible, and drawing an alien on the stall door, because he's got nothing better to do, and has Tweek Tweak on his mind again.

His first class is math, which doesn't bode well for the day. Education in juvie was a joke. It was either go to school or sit in your room all day, and Craig chose school – but in every fucking class, they treated the students like they were dumb as dirt. Not that South Park High is much of an improvement, but he thinks people might actually learn things here. Maybe?

When the bell rings and Craig shuffles into his math class, he spots Clyde. He's sitting in the back of the class talking with Bebe, but quiets when Craig comes in. Craig wonders if he should wave, but Clyde ignored him all summer…so he lowers his eyes and takes the last seat available, the one next to Kip Drordy.

"We're going to start today by taking a quiz to assess everyone's ability in mathematics," announces the teacher, some blond lady that's wearing too much lip liner.

This is bad news. Craig spent his low-level math courses in juvie sleeping most of the time, doodling on his desk or the papers in front of him, or, during Kenny's brief stint with him, playing paper football in the back of the classroom.

The teacher lays the quizzes down on their desks. When she tells them to turn the papers over, everything on the page looks like it's in a foreign fucking language. Craig wracks his mind for anything lingering that would help him solve this shit, but there's nothing. His mind is blank.

Craig returns his quiz with nothing but the tenth doctor scrawled into the corner of his page with a TARDIS behind him.

When class ends, the teacher stops him before he can get out the door.

"Can I have a word, Mr…?"

"Tucker," he mutters, knowing where this conversation is going.

"I noticed that you didn't fill out your quiz," she says, "I was wondering if you thought this class is a joke, because I want you to know that I take my job seriously."

Craig shuffles uncomfortably. After a beat of silence, he answers, "I didn't know the answers."

"This is the lowest level math class that this school offers at your grade, Mr. Tucker," she replies.

And Craig doesn't know what he's supposed to say to that, so he responds, "Sorry."

The teacher sits down at her desk and takes his quiz, scrawling something onto the back of it before she returns it to him. She instructs, "I want you to take this to Mr. Mackey's office before you go to your next class."

Craig takes the quiz and mumbles a half-hearted goodbye. He reads the cursive writing on the back as he walks down the hall, dodging harried students and clumps of loiterers standing circled against lockers. All it reads is 'Mr. Tucker said he did not know the answers to this quiz. Consider enrolling him in different classes.'

Mackey's office is crowded with students. Craig guesses that they're all here for schedule changes, and that seems like what he's here for too, maybe. He can hear Wendy Testaburger arguing with Mr. Mackey about her electives even though the door is closed, and decides to sink into a seat to wait. He already wants to go home. He wishes he was racing in Martha, or sitting on his bed watching porn, or even that he could be abducted by aliens and never come back – anyplace but this school, with these people, in this town.

"Craig, have you got something on your schedule that needs seeing to?" Mr. Mackey is standing in front of him, and it's only then that Craig realizes the rest of the students have filtered out with the problems solved.

"Oh, um," Craig hands over the crumpled quiz and says, "My math teacher told me to give this to you."

Mr. Mackey takes the paper and his eyes scan the page, "…mmkay," is all that he says, "I think Mrs. Wood is suggesting that we enroll you in our remedial program."

"Special classes?" Craig says.

"We just want what's best for you, mmkay?" Mr. Mackey replies, "Do you want to try that, or do you want to keep going with what you already have on your schedule?"

Craig doesn't see much of a choice here.

"I guess. The remedial classes," he answers, wondering if he should feel ashamed, "or whatever."

Mackey retreats into his office, where Craig can hear him clacking away on his computer. He returns a few minutes later with a pink paper and a new schedule in his hand. He says, "Your next class is your English class, and that's already started so I wrote you a pass, mmkay? You have a good day, Craig."

Not fucking likely, he thinks, but shuts his mouth and tramps down the hallway.

The remedial classes are tucked into a small hallway in the back of the school, where they even have their own computer lab and are allowed to eat in the classrooms if they want. Craig's new English class is toward the beginning of the hall. The door is closed, and he struggles with it for a minute before he pries it open. The teacher and the students inside stare at him as he shuffles inside.

"Can I help you?" asks the teacher.

Craig hands him his pass and scans the room for a place to sit. There aren't many kids in the classroom – maybe even more empty desks than there are people. There's Jimmy, and Red, and a couple people that Craig doesn't recognize.

And in the very back, next to the window…there's Tweek.

Craig weaves through the desks and snags the one beside his. He's dressed comfortably in a t-shirt and cargo shorts whose pockets look to be filled to capacity, and clunky black boots.

"Hey," Craig greets.

Tweek stares back at him, and for a second Craig thinks that he's about to get the silent treatment.

But then Tweek mumbles softly, "Hi."

**xxx**

**Thank you for reading/reviewing. You guys are great!**


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